The natural world. Looking pretty for 3.5b years.

Flashing Light

Solarization is a special photo technique where a developing print is exposed to a flash of light while still in the darkroom tray. The result produces both positive and negative effects on the artistically rendered image in ghostly, halos of light. The same effect was captured by a very lucky Russian photographer when the recent meteor exploded over Siberia while he was conducting a sunrise photo shoot.

If timing and location are everything to a photographer then the surprised Russian was definitely in the right place at the right time. Streaking high above the city of Chelyabinsk and traveling over 12 miles/second, the meteor exploded in the atmosphere creating a flash brighter than the Sun. NASA has estimated that 500 kilotons of energy was released by the blast of space rock weighing nearly 10,000 tons.The flash created a remarkable solarized panoramic of the frozen Siberian landscape that Marat Ametvaleev captured directly in his camera.